The Power of Twitter

Twitter is unbelievably real-time voice-of-crowds. I'm thoroughly impressed and, now, hooked on to it!

Let me give you a recent instance. @dkris wrote that he was sitting next to the cutest girl of BCB8, in one of the sessions. Tweets like that would obviously incite my interest and I asked if someone has more details than that. Very soon, several more tweets followed describing where he was and if this should have been the focus in a Barcamp.

Moral issues aside, the whole community got into action and in less than 10 minutes @alagu and @amigos uploaded of two photos the girl concerned having a chat with @dkris on TwitPic.

Here I am, sitting in Mumbai (could have been anywhere else in the world too!) getting real-time updates (and photos) on what's interesting in a Barcamp in Bangalore, without any charge (on a device of my choice) and from at least 100 different sources.

Distances don't matter. And there is enough being said for all possible interests e.g., a girl in Barcamp Bangalore (how geeky!)

Twitter is Great! :D

Barcamp: Introduction and Invitation

Barcamps are meeting grounds for techie community where they discuss various technical topics, more from an application perspective. They are increasingly see all over the globe as the hubs of technical innovation and entrepreneurship. The first Barcamp in India was organized in Delhi in March 2006, and since then close to 20 Barcamps have taken place in various cities of India.

Here are two articles published by leading newspapers that give a good intro to Barcamps:
1. ToI Delhi
2. Businessworld

What makes barcamp unique and distinct from all other technical conferences is their Ad-Hoc nature. Barcamps are 'unconferences', and by definition unconferences are unstructured conferences. Nothing except the start and end time of the conference is decided beforehand. The topics, speakers, time-slots etc are decided on the spot depending on taste and interest of participants. And, a speaker at a Barcamp is just a session leader. Barcamps have no fixed theme. It can have sessions ranging from Web 2.0 to cooking to adventure sports.

The essential ism of an unconference is "Audience is more intelligent that the speaker". A barcamp is characterised by the sheer energy of its participants. It is said that there are "no spectators, only participants" in a Barcamp. Over a period of 1-3 days all participants, despite their varied backgrounds and experience, begin sharing a camaraderie of sorts.

Barcamp Bangalore 3 (BCB3) will take place on Mar 31 - Apr 1 weekend in IIM Bangalore. BCB3 organizers also wish to give a special thrust to SocialTech, non-technical aspects of IT - e-governance, copyrights, usability, Social Entrepreneurship etc. This a free event and you can register for the event by editing the wiki on event website http://barcampbangalore.org. The only eligibility is that the participants should contribute in some way - either by volunteering, taking or helping in a session, or by asking good pertinent questions. There is no room for a passive spectator in a Barcamp. A passive spectator, typically, loses interest soon and drops out of the event.

Find out more for yourself on Google: Barcamp, Barcamp Bangalore, Unconference, Barcamp blogs. The "official" website of barcamp is http://barcamp.org, where you would find a list of all Barcamps happening all over the world.

For any more details/doubts/suggestions, go Google! :)
All criticism is welcome. But please note that I (or anyone else) does (or can) not control Barcamps :)